Philip Rosedale at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam (picture by Sarah Godard)
Philip Rosedale watchers, rejoice! Not only there is our video interview with the Chairman of Linden Lab, but there is also a long and thorough interview by Professor Robert Bloomfield, which will be discussed at Noon on Monday, September 29 in Metanomics, as a panel of experts responds to Rosedale’s vision. If my day/night job as a financial journalist allows it, I will try to participate in this discussion.
You can find excerpts of the interview on Metanomics, and also reactions by experts. I would like to comment on the excerpt about Philip’s transition from CEO of Linden Lab to Chairman of that company. The excerpt is titled Philippe Rosedale: Getting Back to the Garage.
Rosedale explains how much he loves to build and to design. Leading a company of 300 people did not leave any time to be actively involved in solving the problems concerning usability and interface.
My take on this: I only talked with Rosedale for about half an hour, but it is obvious that the man is, among other things, passionate builder. My colleague Sarah Godard, who went very recently for the very first time in Second Life, told Rosedale about the steep learning curve. Rosedale responded with great passion, explaining how important it was to master the camera in the interface, how beautiful that tool is, inciting my colleague to give it another try.
He also admitted that the first experiences in Second Life do not incite people enough to stay. It is so obvious how involved Rosedale is on an emotional and intellectual level with Second Life, so I guess convincing other people to give Second Life a try, making those very first hours in-world into a compelling experience, must be high on his agenda.
It is not Second Life as an isolated project which is very important. There is not only the fact that Rosedale loves to build things, to solve technological puzzles, to enable people to build worlds in a Lego-like manner. This man has a grander vision of what is happening with the internet at large.
He sees a transition from a dominant use of the web to a internet dominant use which is some form of connected virtual worlds. This is a very important transition, because nowadays we mainly think about internet as about “the web”.
In virtual worlds one can experience things which are now on the web or even in the “real world” with other people at the same time. Virtual worlds, once one gets through the learning curve, are easier to understand than the web – for instance because they depend less on language.
This development is important on an even higher level, not only for internet, but for mankind. The very diversified content creation in Second Life by individuals shows us something of things to come in the “real world”, where more and more goods and services will be customized on an individual level and also by individuals themselves, who will increasingly “master the atoms”. What really matters, in Second Life and in the real world, are time and creativity.
Also the whole concept of Second Life is in fact a philosophical concept. While Second Life as such has not been invented by Rosedale during his mythical first participation in the Burning Man event, there are striking similarities between Burning Man and Second Life:
- There is no pre-defined purpose.
- Relations are supposed to be based on reciprocity, there are no spectators or tourists, only participants.
- The adversity of the environment, difficulties where all participants have to struggle with, and which have an impact on the community at large.
This for me are key elements, which make that Second Life is a fundamentally different place as compared to corporate environments, gaming environments and many kids/teens worlds. It also gives Second Life a rather unique position on the virtual worlds market.
A lot of the stuff Rosedale and Linden Lab are doing can only be fully understood if one takes into account this broader vision. The user interface is crucial, because if that problem is tackled, it gives easy access to virtual worlds which are fundamentally easier to use than many web applications. So while at first sight it may seem strange that a Chairman is involved with the development of a user interface, it actually is not, as long as one takes into account this broader picture.
The vision of the “connected virtual worlds” also explains that another major point for the Chairman will be the interoperability. Instead of considering the reverse engineering of Second Life technology as an attack by the competition, Linden Lab almost seems to rejoice. The business model of Linden Lab now is that of a hosting company and there is also revenue from managing the virtual currency, the Linden dollar. In the connected virtual world there will be a desire to move virtual content around. Linden Lab could offer services like managing ccounts, inventories, hosting and virtual currencies.
Somewhere in the background of these visions seems to be a desire to actually help mankind. Connecting people, making boundaries collapse, facilitating new forms of education and collaboration, it is easy to consider Linden Lab almost as a non-profit institution. Rosedale himself for instance is considering how virtual environments could help people in developing world to start businesses.
On the other hand Second Life is a for profit company – and a profitable company. Is Rosedale too much of a dreamer in this context? He himself points out that many great companies are involved in humanitarian projects. Rosedale says that everything which increases the number of user hours in Second Life is both financially profitable while it is also a “benefit for the world”, because very often residents do things which make the world somehow a better place.
Is Rosedale right about all these things? I don’t know. But to me, this man is very much a chairman, because he really has a vision about the company and the industry, and he identifies clearly main action points for the company in this broader context.
Roland Legrand
